On Monday, the 30th of March, the system of ZXB-VC in Delve exited it’s final i-hub reinforcement timer a few hours prior to the daily downtime. This system is the current base of operations for N3 alliances DARKNESS. [DARK.] and The Kadeshi [THOR] who deployed there to assist with the apparent invasion of Fountain by Northern Coalition. [NC] and allies. With the drama that occurred with the Fountain invasion and the lack of commitment by the CFC for “goodfights” alone the content seemed to stall until the CFC declared their invasion of Delve, with the aims of making it a freeport region.
This invasion of Delve began when the CFC headed straight for the system of ZXB-VC where BRAVE even joined the fight with N3 to fight against the CFC, even though they were in the midst of dealing with Pandemic Legion [-10.0]‘s attack on their home system of GE-8JV in Catch. After these engagements and a few lost objective’s by N3 it ultimately led to the fight this report is based on, the final i-hub timer.
The fight itself began a few hours before downtime with most fleets forming around 09:30 ET in preparation. The ships of choice for this engagement were; the CFC main force flying sentry Dominixes supplemented by a small capital gang consisting of 12 Naglfars, 3 Archons and 1 Nidhoggur. They also had a small Harpy fleet in support. [NC], Black Legion. [MEN.] and Nulli Secunda [S2N] in Ravens with [THOR] and [DARK] in a Legion gang with 1 Revelation, 5 Moros, 1 Naglfar, 6 Archons and a Chimera in support.
Ultimately the system during this engagement was saved by the forces of N3 and retrieved from the clutches of the CFC, thankfully so as otherwise it would have been lost just 6 days after their invasion plans were announced. To explain how this was possible considering that the CFC are usually tarnished with the ‘blob thine enemy’ brush I contacted Fleet Commanders on both sides to detail their perspective.
Below is the report given by CFC FC and Goonswarm Federation [CONDI] member, Fawlty7.
The initial plan was to form up earlier and get on grid atleast 20mins before the timer, but I got hung on in real life and was a little late and then getting the correct fleet comp took a little longer. Once we departed we had a harpyfleet come along while our caps stayed in Y-2ANO. It was expected to be them going to the sbu and killing it asap as they have done/tried in the past. They did this and it was dead by the time I landed on grid, so we decided to take the fight especially with hostile caps sitting on grid. Once we landed we spread out dropped our drones and I asked the harpyfleet fc to land ontop of the raven fleets logi to try disrupt it as much as possible, unfortunately he got his fleet dragged off target by some bubbles and the legions+ravens smartbombs began working on him.
Once I noticed we were losing ships I asked the fleet members who were dying if they were dying to the dreads that were close to us or the ravens, they replied the dreads so I attempted to kill one of the moros’ on grid, unfortunately we didn’t break it and this took us about 3mins of actual fighting which upon people linking their loss mails wasn’t even the ship killing them. It was the ravens, so we spent time shooting the wrong targets, but thats a lesson learnt. If we had been shooting ravens longer the outcome might have been a little different but hard to say. Overall it was an entertaining engagement and my first time actually using domifleet on grid in combat.
It appears that the unpredictable monster that is Real life could be the main cause of the loss of the objective. Obviously, as all space capsuleers do know, Real life does come first but that doesn’t mean that it has no effect on things in-game. We will never know if this small time delay could have actually allowed them to win had things gone to plan because alternative issues may have allowed N3 to still be prepared in advance.
I spoke to [NC] FC, Fuuufa, to explain their plan and how it unfolded.
Well the plan was to hold the subs on the Y-2 gate in ZXB while we used dread to blab the SBU. However we were late to the system so instead put all the subs and dreads on the SBU as we entered. From that moment we had already won the DPS race and the Domis came in and it was brawl time. They had a few good bombing runs on us but good timing on smart bombs negated incoming bomb dmg significantly. We were always aware of what CFC were up to and they out numbered us slightly in supers and titans and didn’t commit so we used that just before DT to drop supers on the ihub and rep it. Personally I’d like to thank everyone for showing up from N3 and CFC, it was a fun solid brawl and I look forward to the next.
Similar to that of Fawlty7’s report above Fuuufa also explains that there was a delay in the form up from their side as well. However, this clearly didn’t prevent things from moving forward as they were able to successfully complete their objective and save the system. An additional point worth mentioning is the timer for the fight clearly reduced the number of pilots expected and prevented the engagement from purely being based on the side with the numerical advantage. At present the system has yet to fall but there are further skirmishes developing along other structures such as POSs.
We will endeavour to keep you up to date with all of the major events throughout the Delve/Fountain conflict and if you have any particular engagements you want mentioning then please get in touch.
A full battle report can be found here with a video shown below.
[DARK]/[THOR] have been contacted but no response has yet been received, updates will be done as and when required.
[If you have any comments or intel you would like to provide please contact me at [email protected] or via an in-game mail]
